


don't be honest (promise me that you want this)

by shineyma



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 02, real shield is the worst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:08:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26941153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Grant's pleased when his wife shows up at his door on the run from traitors in SHIELD. He's delighted when she's willing to have sex with him again.What comes after that, though, leaves him more than a little concerned.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Comments: 8
Kudos: 83





	don't be honest (promise me that you want this)

**Author's Note:**

> Ta-da!!! Week forty-one!! Which tbh I really really didn't think was gonna be an actual fic. I had a very stressful week with my AC giving out followed by a hurricane, so I gave myself permission to just do a drabble this week...but fic happened instead! Tbh I'm very proud of myself.
> 
> I hope y'all enjoy, and that any readers who happen to be in Louisiana are safe and well. Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! <3

It’s been too damn long since Grant’s wife has been in his bed where she belongs.

First there was the Bus, where Coulson’s willingness to turn a blind eye to their gleeful disregard of frat regs didn’t do a damned thing to change the fact his bunk could barely fit _him_ , let alone a whole second person. Then it was Lorelei and her mind control, after which he was disinclined to touch _any_ woman, let alone one as tentative as Jemma was being. And before he could get over _that_ , there was the uprising, which spiraled into a disaster that saw him tossed into a hole in the ground Vault.

All told, it’s been a good eighteen months since Grant was last able to properly enjoy his wife, and he takes advantage of this opportunity for as long as he can. She’s just as responsive and a little bit meaner than he remembers—but then, she’d probably say the same of him—and he enjoys every second.

No doubt about it, it’s the best sex they’ve had since their reunion after that time SHIELD (incorrectly) declared him dead. Not good enough to make the eighteen month dry spell worth it, of course, but enough to soften the blow.

Too bad fantastic sex is no exception to that old saying about all good things coming to an end. Eventually, they’ve both reached their limit, and Grant can’t—as much as he’d love to—hang around in bed with her all day.

He rolls to his feet, leaving Jemma sprawled on her stomach like a particularly smug cat, and makes a quick detour into the bathroom to clean himself up a little. (Or a lot; there’s blood drying on his shoulders, thanks to the repeated application of Jemma’s nails.) When he returns to the bedroom, he finds she’s only moved to roll onto her back.

She makes a hell of a picture there, sprawled in his sheets, skin reddened from the pass of his stubble and his hands. If he didn’t have things to do…

But he does. Important things, things that can’t wait. Things that need to happen while Jemma’s safely contained here, sleeping off their marathon sex in his bed.

(Their bed. What’s his is hers and that makes it _their bed_. But sudden amenability to sex aside, he knows she’s not ready to admit they’re still married yet. Better not to get into any bad habits and risk saying something that’ll send her running.)

He allows himself a moment to burn the sight of her spread out on his sheets, breathless and spent, into his memory. Then, regretfully, he turns away to grab his jeans.

The slight squeak of the mattress springs heralds movement on Jemma’s part, too; he glances over his shoulder and finds she’s propped herself up on an elbow to watch him.

“Shall I take this as a hint to leave?” she asks.

“Not at all,” he says, and—unable to help himself—returns to the bed to kiss her. “You’re welcome to stay. In fact, I’d prefer it. But I’ve gotta go—got somewhere to be.”

She sighs and flops onto her back, stretching her arms above her head.

“Let me guess,” she says. “It’s completely, utterly unrelated to everything I told you about the false SHIELD and the attack that left the _actual_ SHIELD vulnerable.”

He pauses in the act of pulling on his shirt, because he can’t read her tone. That doesn’t happen often.

“If I said it wasn’t?” he asks.

Jemma sighs again and stretches, arching her back and giving him a hell of a view of her breasts. (And the excessive stubble burn he left across them. With the very small part of his mind not occupied with admiring his wife, he makes a mental note to have Evie send some lotion or something up here. Jemma’ll be in misery tomorrow otherwise.)

“Baby?” he prompts, once the show is over.

She doesn’t protest the endearment. Of course, she didn’t protest it while he was fucking her into the mattress, either, but her letting it pass by when they’re _not_ otherwise occupied is a hell of a lot more noteworthy.

“If you’re going after SHIELD,” she says, almost absently, as she stretches to reach one of his pillows, “leave our old team alone.”

…That can’t mean what he thinks it means.

“Not counting us, our old team was four people,” he points out. “That leaves a lot of SHIELD agents.”

She scoffs and curls around the pillow.

“Does it?” she asks. “SHIELD, Hydra…one can barely tell the difference anymore. Just don’t hurt the team and I’ll be fine.”

_Fine_ is a long ways from _happy_ —and more importantly, Grant’s finally placed her tone as bitter resignation. He doesn’t like it one bit.

So, even though he can _feel_ this beautiful opportunity slipping through his fingers, he returns his holster to the hook he just lifted it off and crosses back to the bed.

“Talk to me,” he orders, dropping down to sit.

If he hoped to annoy her out of her strangely subdued state, he’s disappointed. She only shifts to rest her head on his thigh. The pillow, she keeps hugged to her chest.

“I went undercover,” she says, and he has to take a slow, deep breath.

“Yeah,” he says once he’s sure he’s got his temper under control. “I heard about that.”

“I activated a brainwashed asset.” With her cheek pressed to his thigh, he can’t see her face, and for once, he doesn’t want to. The waver in her voice is bad enough. “Donnie Gill, you remember him? He was a _child_ —a child manipulated into following Ian Quinn into crime, and then twisted into a puppet by Hydra. And I activated him to save my own skin.”

“Jem—”

“He died,” she continues, distantly, “less than an hour later. But if he hadn’t…I would have had to leave him. There was no extraction plan for a brainwashed agent—as poor Agent Palamas can attest.”

Grant has to wince at that. Kara Palamas was a hell of an agent before the uprising, and a hell of an asset after Whitehall worked his magic on her. These days, with Whitehall dead and her programming only half-broken, she’s a shadow of a person. He’s got people working on the rest of it, but for now, they still have to order her to _eat_.

“Agent Palamas was brainwashed on my account,” she adds, and in his surprise, Grant starts so hard he nearly sends her off his lap.

“What?” he asks, even as he steadies her. “What are you talking about?”

“Bobbi.” She hugs her pillow a little tighter. “Coulson sent her under to watch my back while I was in Hydra, and in order to get in position to do so—in order to earn Whitehall’s trust—she gave up a safehouse. A safehouse Agent Palamas happened to be in at the time.”

“Oh, baby.” He runs his fingers through her hair, hoping to encourage her to look at him; she only turns her face into his jeans. “That’s not your fault.”

“It wasn’t Agent Palamas’ either. Not her fault that I wanted to be _useful_ and demanded to be allowed undercover, nor that Coulson cared too much to leave me unprotected—”

She stops and takes a deep breath.

“Bobbi is with the false SHIELD,” she says. “As is Anne Weaver, a woman I respected—who mentored me throughout my time at the Academy. And countless others, sufficiently numbered as to operate an _aircraft carrier_.”

Finally, she sits up and, still hugging the pillow, turns to face him.

“They call themselves SHIELD, but the only thing they’ve dedicated their considerable resources to is spying on us. We call _ourselves_ SHIELD, but all _we’ve_ managed since the uprising is to clean up messes of our own making.”

What Grant’s getting from this little speech is that his wife is desperately depressed, with a side of serious trauma, and he adds that to the top of his list of things SHIELD needs punishing for. What he _isn’t_ getting, however, is how it leads into her not caring if he kills a bunch of people.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he says, and tucks her hair out of her face. It’s shorter now, and wild after the hours they’ve spent in bed. It’s cute. “I know you’ve been through a lot, and I wish I’d been there to help you through it. But I’m not following what you’re saying.”

She smiles humorlessly.

“What I’m saying,” she says, “is that I gave you up because you were Hydra. I called our marriage over, I tried to harden my heart, I tried to move on—all because it was the _right thing to do_. Because I was SHIELD.” She sniffles a little and wipes at her eyes. “And all I achieved was getting _two_ people brainwashed.”

“Oh, baby.” He tries to draw her into a hug, but she resists, pulling back.

“No,” she says. “No, let me finish, and then you can go take care of your mischief while I sulk.”

He is _not_ going to leave her here to sulk, but he will let her finish. “Fine.”

“My point was…I did the selfless thing. I tried to be _good_.” She shakes her head. “But all I did was cause harm, to others and to myself. So I’m tired of being selfless. I’m tired of _caring_. It doesn’t accomplish anything at all.” Mouth tight, she meets his eyes. “So leave the people I love alone, and do what you will with the rest.”

Grant gives it a couple seconds to make sure she’s done, then nods.

“Okay,” he says, and pulls the pillow away from her. Obstruction removed (and tossed over his shoulder), he’s free to grip her around the waist and pull her into his lap. “Come here.”

She squeaks at the sudden motion and clutches at his shoulders for balance. “Grant!”

“You were right,” he says, ignoring the scolding tone. “I _was_ planning to go out and take care of SHIELD while I knew you were safe in my building. But if you’re willing to be selfish and stick around, there’s no rush.”

Jemma stills. “You aren’t worried I’ll change my mind?”

He is, in fact, one hundred percent positive she will…which is exactly why he’s not rushing out to take her up on that very kind offer. If he goes and hurts anyone with her blessing, it’ll just be one more brick to add to her already towering pile of guilt once she gets past this resignation.

So he’ll happily accept her back as his wife, install her at his side, and keep her, but he’s not lifting one finger against SHIELD until she’s well enough to take back her permission to hurt them.

(At which point they’ll probably have a fight because he’s _definitely_ gonna hurt them. But even if she’s furious, at least it’ll be at him and not herself.)

He’s not telling her that, though. Way too much chance it turns into her digging her heels in and insisting she _won’t_ change her mind.

Instead, he shifts back until they’re fully on the bed, then rolls her under him.

“Nah,” he says. “Besides, why spend time with those losers when I could spend it with you instead?”

He lowers his head to kiss her neck as he speaks—gently, avoiding the hickies that are already blooming there.

“I’m feeling recovered and ready for round, oh, thirty-seven,” he guesses. “How about you?”

“Thirty-seven is—oh!—something of an exaggeration, I think,” she counters breathlessly.

“Is it?” He shifts down, giving himself room to get at her breasts. Gotta be gentle here, too—and can’t forget to request that lotion. “Well then I better get to work until we get there, huh?”

“If—” she moans as he moves further down—“if you insist.”

“Oh, I do,” he says. “Don’t worry, I’ll do all the work. _You_ just lie there and think of how many months I had in that cell to plan what I’d do the next time I got you in my bed.”

Jemma whimpers. Grant smiles against her hip.

“Why don’t you count for me, baby?” he asks. “The goal is thirty-seven, and since we didn’t keep track earlier, I guess we’ll just have to start at one.”

“Oh God,” she gasps—whether at the prospect of thirty-seven more orgasms or where he just touched her, he doesn’t really care. He just enjoys the sound…and the begging that follows it.

He knows it’ll take a lot more than sex to help Jemma heal from everything she’s been through, but for now? He thinks it’s a hell of a good start.


End file.
